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SECTION C
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the sea coast echo?Thursday, july t3, i989-ic
Ancient communities
Archaeologists dig into local prehistory
Hancock County?an important cultural center? The idea might seem rather foreign today, but had we been here
3,000	to 3,500 years ago we may have found ourselves amid a thriving hub of civilization.
A group of anthropology students and instructors from the Hattiesburg campus of the University of Southern Mississippi has spent the last six weeks in Port Bienville Industrial Park seeking the few remaining fragments of that civilization at a place some think may have been among the most important archaeological sites in the nation?before falling victim to bulldozer blades and the selfishness of rclic hunters.
The group is participating in an archaeological field school being conducted by Dr. Ed Jackson and instructor Baxter Mann that is in its second year of work at Port Bienville.
According to Mann, the field school gives students an opportunity to apply the techniques and principles learned in a clas-soom to a real situation.
The lengthening string of ?Indiana Jones? movies and Florida treasure hunter Mel Fischer?s now legendary discovery of the galleon Atocha with its burden of riches have endowed archaeology with an aura of glamour, excitement and potential wealth.
The reality of archaeological excavation at Port Bienville, however, could hardly be farther from the hype of Hollywood and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
?It?s been a very mundane summer,? Jackson said.
Ac fV,
carefully scrap away thin layers of dirt, anticipating the tell-tale sound of the trowel blade striking their next bit of unlikely treasure.
Except for a clay, hearth-like structure and the adjacent, charred remnants of a wooden post, there have been none of the spectacular finds one might expect from a project of this nature.
drastically.
A LEGACY OF DESTRUCTION
At the current excavation site, there once stood two enormous shell rings, several hundred feet in diameter and rising four to five feet above the surrounding terrain, according to Jackson.
the site.
Along with the rings went what Jackson claims was perhaps one of the most important prehistorical sites in the country, certainly in the Southeast, and Hancock County?s strongest link with its before-Christ inhabitants.
Damage to the site didn?t end v/hen the drone of heavy equipment ceased. The dozers only
Port Director (Harold ?Buz?) Olsen thinks it?s important enough to take care of. I hope we can continue that kind of cooperation,? Jackson said.
Laws protecting antiquities, both on a state and national level, however, are still too weak, the researcher said.
A FEW IDEAS
The site today can never sur-
ment in the discovery of the hearth-like structure.
?It most likely was a big earth-oven, used to cook for a large number of people at one time. It was used enough that the soil is baked,? Jackson said.
The drivers of the bulldozers that razed the site reported hitting numerous such structures, according to Jackson.
Researchers may never get a firm grasp on what was happening at the site so many centuries ago, but they have a few ideas.
TTie site seems to have been a hub in an extensive trade network that extended as far as Illinois and up the East Coast.
?During that time period, this seems to have been highly involved in that network,"Jackson said.
Jackson believes the Port Bienville site may have served as a seasonal community where a large number of people gathered for several months to harvest shellfish, to hunt, fish and to participate in ceremonies and rituals.
The creation and function of the shell rings is a mystery to which clues are all but nonexistent.
?We don?t know why they were constructed, whether they were purposefully piled or if they evolved simply because the huts were arranged in a circle and the shells were thrown out the back doors as food refuse,? ^ Jackson said.
The rings probably served to integrate society, he said, because a large number of. pea-pie were needed to complete them and they then, having become imbued with symbol-